Documents of Latin American and Latino Art

In this short essay, critic Walter Engel attempts to demonstrate that, due to the maturity, breadth, and social content of its painting, Latin America will become a new center for art on a par with Paris. Engel—an Austrian critic who lived in [...]

In this article, the art critic Walter Engel, an Austrian based in Colombia, wrote an overview of how various contemporary artists represent the human figure. To Engel, regarding this genre, in concept “no period or country may claim [it] for [...]

This is a letter written by Casimiro Eiger to Roberto García Peña, the director of the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, in response to an article published in that newspaper on June 15, 1954. According to the letter in question, the painter Ignacio Gó [...]

Art critic Walter Engel wrote five articles on exhibitions held in 1948, among them the solo show of artist Carlos Díaz Forero, sponsored by the Universidad Nacional of Bogotá and held at the Museo Nacional in that city in August; the exhibition of [...]

Curator and historian Álvaro Medina wrote an essay that addresses the socio-political and aesthetic history of Colombia during the second half of the 20th century. One section of the essay, “El arte y la violencia bipartidista,” deals with the [...]

This catalogue was published by the Banco de la República of Colombia in February 1963 in conjunction with the exhibition of twenty-three paintings from the bank’s Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango art collection. The exhibition was held in the [...]

Published in the catalogue to the exhibition commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Primer Salón de Arte Moderno, this text by Sylvia Juliana Suárez presents the idea, process and results of a curatorial and editorial project formulated by [...]

In the introduction to his book “Nueve artistas colombianos” [Nine Colombian Artists], poet and art critic Jorge Zalamea explains the objectives of the publication, and discusses the Colombian art scene of the early forties. Zalamea starts out [...]

Colombian painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo was awarded first prize at the First Salón Anual de Artistas Colombianos held in 1940. In this incendiary text, painter Eladio Vélez—who had previously been embroiled in a heated debate with Pedro Nel G [...]

“El americanismo de los años 40 y la nueva vanguardia colombiana” [The Americanism of the 1940s and the New Colombian Avant-Garde], an essay by the historian Álvaro Medina, published in 1978, discusses the artistic languages inspired by the [...]

In the book Problemas sociales en las artes plásticas [Social Problems in the Visual Arts], the critic Walter Engel reviews different periods in the universal history of art, discussing how some cultures and artists depict social issues?such as [...]

In this article, critic Germán Rubiano Caballero introduces a group of Colombian artists born in the first half of the twentieth century. To place these artists in the international context of Western art history, Rubiano Caballero associates them [...]

In this interview, originally published in 1956, painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo speaks of his childhood and formative years. Regarding his childhood, he reports that with the support of his mother, he started “doodling” at a young age. Indeed, [...]

This text presents the exhibition Dibujantes y grabadores colombianos held at theMuseo de Arte at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in May 1975. Historian Álvaro Medina asserts that the exhibition brings together figurative artists representative [...]

This is the text of the lecture given in October 1934 by the writer Jorge Zalamea at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá on the occasion of the exhibition of works by the painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo. The essay begins with a general discussion on the [...]

The critic Luis Vidales Jaramillo reviews the fresco La liberación de los esclavos [The Freeing of the Slaves] by Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo at the National Capitol of Colombia. Vidales Jaramillo considers it a successful work because it expresses “ [...]

In this article, poet and critic Luis Vidales expresses his position on the debate surrounding abstract and figurative art, a polemic central to Colombian art at the time. First, Vidales argues that certain concepts have been poorly defined in [...]

This text signed by Colombian historian Félix Ángel Vallejo, artist Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo, and Óscar Delgado (members of the executive committee of the Asociación de Escritores y Artistas de Colombia in representation of the entire membership [...]

This anonymous article published in the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reports the decision of the Bogotá City Council to “condemn” the frescos by Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo in the Colombian Capitol. The column asserts that, while the controversial [...]

This document outlines the reasons that the Bogotá City Council approved sending a request to the federal government asking that the murals by Colombian painter Ignacio Gómez Jaramillo at the Capitol be “taken down or replaced.” Gómez [...]

This is the second part of the article “Primeras etapas de la abstracción en Colombia II” [First Stages of Abstraction in Colombia II] that critic María Elvira Iriarte published in issue 23 of the Revista Arte en Colombia. In this text, she [...]

The author of this document claims that Colombian painting has no past. According to the Argentine critic Marta Traba, the visual arts produced in Colombia from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century are of no interest [...]

[This document includes] a four-page brochure whose first page reads: “Universidad Nacional de Colombia/ Museo Nacional/ Exposición de pintura/ contemporánea/ octubre 1948.” The other three pages contain the names of the artists participating [...]

In June 1960, the exhibition, 3000 años de arte colombiano [3000 Years of Colombian Art], was held in Miami and Washington. The journal Lámpara [Lamp] (Bogotá, published 1952–85) printed a supplement with writings by the curators who performed [...]